“I love the amusement park business,
but I’m not a guy who goes on rides.
Kiddie rollercoasters and lazy rivers
are about as daring as I get,” says
Michael Baroni, general counsel of
Palace Entertainment in Newport
Beach, California. The company owns
and operates 22 parks in 11 states, with
600 rides and attractions, that provide
employment for 10,000 people and
draw 7 million visitors each year. “When
I accepted the job at Palace Entertainment, I
knew safety would be my number 1 concern.

I had read horror stories of injuries and death
that kept me up at night before I even started
this job.” (For the record, according to the
International Association of Amusement Parks
and Attractions, the likelihood of being injured
seriously enough to require overnight hospitalization on an amusement park ride is 1 in 24
million.)

But when he joined the company in 2010,Baroni found conditions within the legal depart-ment that gave him nightmares: a backlog ofcases up to seven years old, many multimillion-dollar lawsuits, and large numbers of workers’compensation incidents. These conditions hadlargely been created by a growing reputationas an easy mark: Palace only took a few casesto trial, and lost some in the $1 million to $3million range, while settling cases, on average,Baroni decided to tackle the problem head-onwith a multipronged approach he labeled Safety1st, with the goal of revolutionizing companyculture to focus on safety above all else.

People. First, he replaced all of the staff in
Palace’s legal, human resources, and risk
management departments. He created a
committee of general managers and maintenance staff, which shares safety information
and implements solutions consistently across
properties. General managers who exhibit the
most successful, proactive attack on safety
issues each year receive an award. And finally,
the company hired a corporate safety expert
who is solely focused on park safety matters.

Policies. Palace Entertainment’s approach to
safety is codified in the new Safety 1st pledge,
in which the company’s commitment to safety
is spelled out, and every employee, regardless
of role, agrees to serve as a “safety officer.”
Same-day reporting of incidents into Legal is
required through new forms and procedures;
and are investigated immediately.